Confederate Industry: Manufacturers and Quartermasters in the Civil War (review)

Despite the many works on the American Civil War, industrial and logistical issues have received relatively scant attention. To the extent that historians are familiar with these issues, the prevailing view, as the author points out, is "that Southern troops . . . were boldly led and poorly fed, that Confederate logistics was in fact a misnomer" (p. viii). In truth, the South strove mightily to develop its wartime industrial and logistical capabilities. Wilson examines an important piece of that industrial infrastructure.

As the book's subtitle indicates, the focus is on the Quartermaster Department and those industries essential to its mission of providing clothing, blankets, shoes, and other equipment. Hence cotton mills, and, to a lesser extent, woolen mills, shoe factories, and related or supporting industries are the focus. Wilson draws reasonable generalizations about Confederate industry, but does not comprehensively examine the entire industrial base. Further insights can thus be gleaned from such books as Frank E. Vandiver's Plowshares into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance. Nor does Wilson provide an institutional history of the Confederate Quartermaster Department.

What Wilson does provide is a valuable assessment of the textile industry's capabilities and the impact of Confederate policies on that industry. The trend during the course of the war was toward centralized control over the economy despite the often spirited objections of states-rights governors like North Carolina's Zebulon Vance. By May 1864, Southern mills were essentially under government control through the impressment of finished goods at fixed prices, management of the labor force via conscription exemptions, and control over raw materials. With these policies in place, Quartermaster General Alexander Lawton could fully mobilize the Southern textile industry to provide for the army's needs, and Southern soldiers were better clothed and shod than earlier in the war. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, the industrial base began eroding just as it was reaching peak efficiency because of the tightening Union naval blockade, the deterioration of the South's rail system, and the destruction wrought by invading Union armies and cavalry raids.

Wilson also examines the Quartermaster Department's limited success in blockade running. He describes as well mill operations and the efforts to keep worn-out machinery functioning, the impact of arduous workdays, and the increasing reliance on women, children, and slave labor as white males went off to war. Finally, Wilson devotes two chapters to the postwar role of manufacturers in the rise of the "New South." The power of the anti-industrial planter aristocracy had been broken and the war revealed the potential value of industry to the Southern economy. Manufacturers, who had been lukewarm at best to secession, quickly swore renewed allegiance to the Union and played a key role in regional politics. The New South would be increasingly urban and industrial.

Wilson's book is an important addition to the scarce body of literature on Civil War industry. His work is extensively grounded in primary sources from university, state, and national archives. Students of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and economic history will want to add Confederate Industry to their bookshelves.